The Way It Should Have Been
by Nancy T
Summary: A way they could have written Cole out of the show without making him evil, insane, and dead. Chapter 10, 'Cole's Choice,' is up.
1. Mortal Danger

_The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper Halliwell, Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthew, Leo Wyatt, Darryl Morris, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc. _

_This story takes place after the "Happily Ever After" episode; Piper is pregnant but not showing, Phoebe still has her power of premonition, Cole is back from vanquishment with more power than he had before, and Leo is still a whitelighter. Seeing that Julian McMahon got another TV series, it was inevitable that Cole had to be written out of the show. This is a way they could have done it without saying that Cole, because of his demon half, would eventually have to turn evil and insane._

The office was in a funky, arty district of San Francisco, and while the New Age bookstore next door had closed, several of the area psychics were apparently doing a roaring business. A well dressed middle-aged man, slightly balding, looked over the signs posted on shop windows and doors as he walked down the street – "Aromatherapy," "Jingle's Original Jewelry," "Take Control of Your Future!" – occasionally giving a quick flicker of a smile.

He stopped at a glass door with the words "Healing of Souls" in large letters at eye level, and below, in smaller lettering, "Clara Karnes. Walk-Ins Welcome."

The man smiled quickly again and walked in. A bell inside the door jangled, and he smelled a very faint odor of incense.

Clara's office was as small inside as it looked outside, but good lighting and a cunning use of mirrors kept it from feeling cramped. It was crowded with a hodgepodge of objects – desk, filing cabinet, sofa, CD player, bookshelves filled with recreational and artistic objects, wind chimes, novels, textbooks, blue ceremonial candles in candle holders. On a card table in the middle of the room was a crude house made of modeling clay. No healer of souls to be seen, but water was running in a back room.

"Hello?"

"Come on in, I'll be out in a moment!"

The man was standing very still, letting his gaze move over the room quickly. "You take walk-ins, right?"

"I have an appointment coming in a moment, but we can talk until she gets here. Have a seat!"

He remained standing. "If I'm your patient, do I get Play-Doh too?"

Clara laughed. "A lot of people find it healing to work with their hands." She snapped off the bathroom light, but paused at the back wall, adjusting the thermostat, before turning to face her guest. She was a slender, attractive woman, simply dressed, with gray in her hair and smile lines around her eyes. "Particularly men. Is that the first thing that – "

She turned, the question choked off in her throat, and her smile froze.

"What's the matter?" asked the man.

She stumbled forward a step, looking at him with terror and fascination. "What – what – "

"You know something."

"What are you?"

"Good, we'll cut to the chase." The man smiled again, and his eyes glowed an inhuman red. "Business going well, is it? Good word of mouth? The problem is that you're bad for other business around here. My business, for one. And the people I work for don't like it. They don't like you at all, Clara. And they know where to find you."

He glanced around casually. Books flew off their shelves, the wind chimes made hideous discordant sounds, the candles melted, the mirrors cracked, the clay house re-formed itself into a dagger.

"Close up shop, Clara." His voice was surprisingly gentle. "You're a good woman, and a smart one. What's the point in sacrificing yourself when no one will ever know or care why it happened? Get an office job somewhere. You can do a lot of good for your co-workers. The money's better, too."

He smiled again, his eyes went back to normal. The clay dagger flew off the table and struck Clara in the stomach. She stepped back with a gasp.

"I'm very practical," he said in the same persuasive tone. "If you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. Close up shop, you can live completely without fear. Keep the office open, your life expectancy is hours. Don't make me do it. It would be pointless."

She didn't say a word; probably couldn't have. Still he looked into her eyes and seemed to respond to them. "No? Too dedicated to your human trash bins?" He shook his head. "Too bad, Clara."

He turned and slammed the door open. The beautiful young woman on the other side, her hand on the handle, was yanked through the door, and the bell above the door was torn from its mooring, hitting the floor with a clank.

"Whoa!" the young woman said, finding her footing as the man rushed by her. "Nice manners, buddy!" She turned ruefully to Clara. "If that was your nine o'clock – Are you all right?"

Clara was shaking, a glaze over her face. "It – it – I – "

"You'd better sit down." The young woman crossed the shop, spotted a chair, put her hand under Clara's elbow. Then she went stiff herself, her head jerked back, her eyes slammed closed, and she saw

_This same shop, this same proprietor. A man enters, one of those whose scrawniness bespeaks too many drugs and too little nourishment. He raises his hand, a gun in it. Clara only has time to say "Who are you?" before the gunshot spins her like a top, blood_

The young woman opened her eyes, and discovered that the older woman was now supporting her.

"You're in great pain," Clara Karnes said.

"You're in mortal danger," said Phoebe Halliwell.

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Piper loaded a plate on the kitchen counter with her home-baked oatmeal cookies while Phoebe poured glasses of apple juice. "So," Piper murmured quietly, "you thought your soul needed healing?"

Phoebe glanced at the kitchen door, and seeing no one, she said with equal quiet, "You know how things have been. My premonition today was my first in months. And sometimes I still wake up with this – cold feeling inside, like I've driven away everyone I've ever loved and I'll never get them back."

"Didn't happen. Wouldn't happen."

Phoebe nodded, her face still troubled. Then she smiled. "And for professional reasons, too. A couple of my regular readers wrote me about Clara, said she'd helped them a lot." There was a slight baby-talk inflection to, "I need to see if she's going to drive Dear Phoebe out of business!"

Piper chuckled, and they carried the refreshments into the parlor, sitting by the coffee table where Paige was talking to Clara. "Well, if Phoebe says that the creep who threatened you and the creep who's planning to shoot you are two different creeps, that's the way it is, but it doesn't make sense. Yesterday, as far as you know, you had no enemies, and now you have two?"

"Apparently," Clara said. She still looked shaken, but was dealing with it well.

"How did you know that the guy who came in today was a demon?"

"I didn't. I just knew – there was something wrong. Even before he did anything."

"How?"

Clara hesitated, and Phoebe leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. "Clara, you've dodged this question a couple of times now, but it's important that you tell us. Don't worry about sounding – unusual. We're pretty unusual ourselves around here."

Clara smiled a little. "I guessed that when you said, 'You've been attacked by an upper-level demon.'" She took a breath. "All right. I can see souls."

"See?" Paige said. "Like – "

"Like a visual image, only not exactly."

"What do they look like?"

"Oh – like – " Clara closed her eyes. "This really is like explaining sight to the blind. When I was little I thought everyone could do it, you know. As I got older I learned to keep quiet about it, and for years I tried to deny it altogether. I only opened the office recently. But I'll try to explain.

"A soul looks, to me, like a – being, a living creature, made out of light. There's a certain straight, flowing energy to the purest souls, almost as though they were traveling somewhere even when the body is still. But all of them have different qualities and different burdens. Fear is the most common, and it takes many forms – sometimes it looks like growths on the soul, sometimes it bloats the soul, sometimes shrinks it. Addictions look like – weights, crushing and distorting. Anger looks like a burn. Pride is like – a shell, is the best way I can put it, something resistant to contact and to movement. Guilt and defeat – " she looked at Phoebe – "they're hard to work out of a soul. They're like stains. You're not a person who is normally a defeatist, but you're in despair about something, and you feel guilty about something."

"Wow." Phoebe barely voiced the syllable.

"It's an amazing gift," Piper said.

"It's a mixed blessing. You might look at someone very deformed or disabled, and feel pity or fear, because we all fear things like that happening to us. But I might look at the same person and, if there's a strong healthy soul there, I would relate to him more easily, knowing that, even if the temporary part of him has great struggles, the permanent part of him will be fine. But I've met people who, everyone thought they were, oh, funny or sexy or dynamic, and I could barely stand to look at them, their souls were so malformed."

At that moment, Leo orbed into the room.

Piper leaped to her feet, a wild mix of distress covered by feigned amusement in her face and voice. "LEO! Ah – you silly, hah-hah, doing your – magic tricks again IN FRONT OF COMPANY – "

"It's all right," Leo said with a grin. "The Elders sent me. They said I could orb in, that we can tell Ms. Karnes everything. They told me what her gift is and what happened today."

"They gave you information without being asked? What, are they up to something?"

"Maybe. All I know is, they're very excited about something related to her." Leo turned his gaze from Piper to Clara. "Ms. Karnes, I'm Leo Wyatt – "

Halfway through the sentence his voice faded, and they all looked at Clara.

She was staring at Leo with a smile that didn't dare to believe its own joy, her eyes wet. It was the look of a mother whose child had flatlined and then been revived.

"What are you?" she asked, in a completely different tone than she'd used earlier that morning.

"I'm a lower-level angel, sort of. And I'm Piper's husband."

"Perfect soul, huh?" Phoebe asked with more than a shade of envy.

"Not perfect. No. But I've never seen one so undamaged. It's so beautiful." She blinked, and tears rolled out of her eyes. "Are all the souls like yours, where you come from?"

Leo was looking embarrassed. "Most are better."

"Oh. Oh, my. That's something to look forward to."

"Clara? The guy in your office this morning?" Paige's verbal nudging finally diverted Clara's attention. "I take it that his soul looked nothing like Leo's?"

"He didn't have one. I've never seen that before."

"Never?" Paige exploded. "We see demons a couple of times a week!"

"You live extraordinary lives," Leo reminded her.

"Ye-ah, lucky us," Piper said. "Still, it seems odd."

"Once or twice, in crowded rooms or passing on a street, I thought I saw – but it's – Suppose you thought you saw someone at a party, moving around, a drink in his hand, but he had no head. You literally wouldn't believe your eyes. I always thought I must have just been mistaken, until one of them was looking straight at me, and there was no mistake. It was terrifying."

"Demons are terrifying, but usually without using guns," Paige said. "Who do you suppose the guy in Phoebe's premonition is?"

"Some dupe, some tool," said Leo.

"A lower-level demon or a screwed-up human doing the demon's dirty work for him," Phoebe said. "And soon. Within a couple of hours. I could tell."

"Then if I just wait here a couple of hours – " Clara began hopefully.

"Then the demon will send someone else when you don't know it's coming," Paige said. "Right now is our best shot. Let's grab the agent and see if he leads us to the principal."


	2. Jimmy's Choice

_The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Leo Wyatt, Darryl Morris, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc. _

"I'll need to freeze," Piper said. "Who wants to be bait?"

Phoebe and Paige shot their hands into the air like schoolgirls. "I do! I do!"

"Bait?" Clara said.

"Pretend to be you, dress like you, putter around the shop, keep her back to the door, and when the bad guy comes he gets a big surprise."

"I can't let anyone else do that for me," said Clara. "I'll be the bait."

"Clara, you already know Leo's an angel," Phoebe said. "The three of us are good witches, and we have special powers. Protecting innocent people like you is what we do."

"If something went wrong and you were hurt, I'd never forgive myself. No, you have to let me be part of this. Unless you're planning to keep me prisoner and break into my office."

Piper grinned toothily and, almost without moving her lips, said, "Leo? Did the Elders mention that she has a death wish?"

"No. They did tell me she's very brave."

"If you're as powerful as you say you are," Clara said, "surely you can protect me."

"We can protect you," the quiet middle-aged man with the persuasive voice was saying to the man in Phoebe's premonition. The two of them were seated at a table by the wall of a run-down bar in which the only light was provided by one small square window with dark glass, two weak ceiling lights, and a small TV set on a shelf behind the bar. Since it was about noon, only a few of the regulars were there, numbing themselves with alcohol and TV, unmindful of the voices behind them.

"You know how I know this is real?" the man in Phoebe's premonition said. His skull-like face stretched into a smile belied by his angry, fearful eyes. "All the magic and stuff you were doing earlier? Because I never see things. When I'm high I feel better, and when I'm coming down I feel like crap, but I never see things."

"Very astute," the demon said. "Then you believe that I can give you what I said – all the money you could want, and no restrictions on how you spend it? Powerful friends in high places who stand by their clients?"

"Oh, I believe it, Anders," the man said. "What I don't understand is why you'd give me all that in exchange for my soul. I'd have thought my soul was a pretty worthless piece of crap."

Anders glanced at the tabletop in deadpan silence for a moment, in which an alert person might have read complete agreement, but over-alertness wasn't the other man's problem. "Don't be ridiculous, Jimmy," Anders said silkily, looking up. "The problem isn't with your soul. It's with the people around you who don't understand what your soul needs, and what it's capable of."

"And you don't actually collect it until I, you know – " Jimmy ran a finger across his throat and gave a cackling, nervous laugh.

"And even then, what happens? I take your soul back where I come from. Now I ask you, do I look like I'm burning in a lake of fire?"

"No, sir, you don't. You look like you're doing pretty damn well."

"I am. And so will you, both in this life and the next. You're a determined guy, Jimmy, and you're willing to do what's necessary. Those are valuable qualities."

"Yeah. Yeah." Jimmy nodded a few times nervously, his gaze flickering around the bar, drawing in a deep breath through his nostrils. It always surprised Anders how even the most pathetic wretches had a moment of hesitation, as though, even in their sealed-off state, the light was trying to reach them. He'd lost a few souls that he'd have thought were sure things in that moment of hesitation.

"I offer you money, influential contacts, freedom to do what you want, and an eternity in contact with power. Really, what other choice do you have?"

"Not much of a one." Jimmy laughed nervously again, and only then met Anders' eyes. "Yeah. OK. I'll do it."

"Excellent, Jimmy. Very smart." Anders smiled and dug into his inside coat pocket.

"So, what? Do I sign something in blood now?"

"Well – if you want," Anders said with an expression of distaste. "This is the only necessary ritual." He pulled what looked like a handful of dark coarse dust from his pocket and cast it over Jimmy's head. The grains of dust burst into intense light as they fell all around him, so that for a second Jimmy looked as if he were surrounded by red-hot wires; then the dust disappeared without a trace. "That lets us track you. You call us, any time, anywhere, one of us will be there." Anders smiled and looked down at the table, and a bound stack of hundred-dollar bills appeared.

Jimmy gave a whoop and grabbed it, but it changed under his hand. He picked up what was now a gun, looking at it with fascination and some excitement.

"You'll have the money soon," Anders said. "But I did tell you that you'd need to do some favors for us from time to time."

"This isn't usually the kind of favor I do for people."

"I think it is now," Anders said.

With the mess Anders had made of the office, there was plenty to do. Clara was putting books back on a shelf as she made the last call to her scheduled clients. "Oh, I'll be back, I'm sure of it. I just don't know when. Until then, you'll keep up the meditation? – That's great. I'm very proud of you. I'll call when this – thing blows over and I'm scheduling appointments again. – I appreciate that. – Goodbye."

She hung up the phone, picked up a file folder, and looked at a filing cabinet that jutted into the room.

The door banged open and Jimmy walked in, his face determined.

"Who are you?" Clara asked.

Jimmy stopped in front of her and raised the gun.

Then, his arm outstretched, his finger on the trigger, he ceased all movement. Clara stopped dead too, a look of fear frozen on her face. The file folder she'd dropped hung half-open in the air.

Piper stepped out from behind the filing cabinet and yelled, "OK!", whereupon Leo and Inspector Darryl Morris entered through the back door. Morris, in contrast to his usual business suit, was wearing a soft maroon sweater and dark casual slacks. "OK, this is going to be the tricky part," he said, going to Jimmy.

Carefully he pried Jimmy's finger off the trigger while Leo stood between the gun and the frozen Clara. Morris worked Jimmy's fingers loose without touching the gun himself, spindled the trigger guard with a pencil, put the gun on the floor and put his foot on it. Then he stood as though he'd just stepped out from behind the filing cabinet, both of his hands on Jimmy's outstretched arm. "Ready."

Piper and Leo hid in the bathroom and, with a wave of her hand in the doorway, Piper unfroze the room.

Morris wrenched down on Jimmy's arm and stomped on the gun, kicking it across the room. Before Jimmy could grasp the situation, Morris had Jimmy's arms pinned behind him and had banged him up against the filing cabinet.

"Where in the hell did you come from?" Jimmy bellowed.

"Clara, call 911," Morris said a little breathlessly, working to restrain the struggling attacker. "Tell them where we are and what happened, that an officer has the suspect in custody and needs assistance."

Clara grabbed the phone. Jimmy said, "You'll get assistance! You'll get my assistance! I have powerful friends and they're not gonna like this!"

"You know, if that's true, they'll bail you out in no time, so you might as well relax."

"Bail is nothing! I'm gonna have all the money in the world and all the freedom to spend it!"

"OK, calm down," Morris said, banging him into the filing cabinet again. "Just relax. You can spend your money when – "

Jimmy wrenched free and ran for the door. Morris grabbed and spun him, and a table full of candles and scented oils went crashing to the floor. Morris tried to get Jimmy's arms again. Jimmy bent and grabbed a long iron candlestick rolling on the floor, swung it at Morris as he straightened. Morris made a little sound as the candlestick struck him in the chest.

"Put that down," Morris snarled, going at Jimmy again. Jimmy swung the candlestick, Morris dodged, the candlestick banged into the filing cabinet with a metallic crunch. Finished with the call, Clara ran over.

Hearing the struggles and crashing, Piper made as if to step out into the office. Leo held her back gently, putting one index finger up to indicate that she should wait another moment.

Jimmy swung the candlestick again. Morris grabbed it with his left hand, pulled Jimmy toward him, and hit Jimmy decisively in the jaw with his right fist. Jimmy fell, knocked out.

"There's a car nearby," Clara said. "They said they'd send it right over."

"Good," Morris said, rolling Jimmy onto his stomach and pulling his hands behind his back.

Piper and Leo came out from the bathroom. "If he's a demon, Heaven wins next week," Piper said.

"Nah, I know him." Morris was pulling his belt off and looping it around Jimmy's wrists as they spoke. "He's a junkie and petty thief, a professional screwup named Jimmy Haines. He tried to talk me into using him as an informant once, but it was pretty clear he'd say anything for money. Using a gun is new for him, though. So is this 'I have powerful friends' number."

"'All the money in the world and all the freedom to spend it,'" Leo quoted. "I think Jimmy's sold his soul."

"To the Devil?"

"To a soul collector. They're upper-level demons. I'd want to see if the Book of Shadows confirms my theory, though," he said, glancing at Piper.

Clara was looking down at Jimmy. "His soul looks like – it looks like there's a cage of fire around it."

"Wish I had a cage," Morris said, pulling the belt tight around Jimmy's wrists.

"Why don't you use handcuffs?" Piper asked.

"I'm off duty, why would I have them on me?" He looked up at Clara. "Do you have a story?"

"Um, yes. I'm thinking of writing a murder mystery, and I had some questions about police procedure. Phoebe's a client of mine, and she suggested I talk to you. You agreed to drop by today, and you had just got here when he came in."

"Have you written anything before?"

"No, I'm a first-time author. I don't even have anything on paper yet."

"Why is this guy after you?"

"I have no idea."

"I like it," Morris said. "It's simple, it doesn't contradict any of the known facts, and it gets him off the street." He looked down ruefully at Jimmy. "Again."

"Oo, major milk craving," Piper said suddenly. "Darryl, I want to get back to the Manor so the baby and I can have a late lunch. Can we take Clara with us?"

"Best if you didn't. The officers should be here in a minute, and they'll want to take a statement from her here. They'll make the arrest and read Jimmy his rights, then when they take Jimmy she can go. It shouldn't take too long."

Clara started for the office door. "All right," Piper said. "Clara, come straight to the Manor after the officers leave. Don't stay in the office alone. Thank you again, Darryl. Very much." She smiled up at Leo. "Shall we?"

He put his arm around her, smiling back, and they disappeared in twinkling blue-white light.

Jimmy stirred and mumbled as Clara looked out the door. "There's a patrol car coming down the street."

"Very good."

At a window table in the coffee shop across the street, Anders watched Clara step out onto the sidewalk and wave at the patrol car. He sipped his espresso, put it down, blotted his mouth carefully with a napkin, and murmured, "Very disappointing."

_Author's Note: Thank you for the feedback! I know it's taking him a while to get here, but Cole shows up in the next chapter and is prominent thereafter, I promise!_


	3. Cole's Soul

_The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthew, Leo Wyatt, Darryl Morris, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc. _

Back at the Manor, Paige sat in the parlor with the Book of Shadows open on her lap, Phoebe nearby, Leo wandering the room. Classical music drifted into the room from the kitchen. "Sounds like your theory was right, Leo," Paige said. "A soul collector offers a person anything he wants in exchange for his soul."

"They crop up in folk tales a lot, of course," said Leo. "People mistake them for the Devil."

"Well, it's not that big a mistake, considering the things that happen to human souls once they're in Hell."

"Which explains why he bought Jimmy's soul, but not why he sent Jimmy after Clara," Phoebe said.

"Soul collectors don't kill," Leo said. "If one of them wants you dead, he gets one of his clients to do it. They can sound rational and logical, and they're very persuasive."

"From what Clara said, that sounds like the demon in her office, all right," Phoebe said.

"Piper!" Paige shouted. "Are you about ready? We're getting great stuff on soul collectors in here!"

Piper came to the doorway, her soothing voice an amusing contrast to Paige's yell. "My baby and I are calmly ingesting wholesome food in a peaceful, beautiful environment," she said. "Then we'll go back to demonic research and yelling and dodging and blowing things up." She disappeared.

"Actually, not a bad idea," Paige said. "Might help that acid stomach I've had lately."

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Uniformed officers Santangelo and Small kept their eyes on the road and the sidewalks surrounding as they drove, ignoring the shouts coming from behind the metal mesh dividing the front and back seats. "You guys are nothing! You're insects! I know a guy who can turn you into insects!"

"Quiet down, you're giving me a headache," Small said.

"I'll get the best lawyer in the city! You'll see! He'll get you guys fired! I'll be in my penthouse and you'll be on the street!"

"I think the best lawyer in the city is a little out of your price range, Jimmy," Santangelo said. "What's wrong with a good PD?"

There wasn't even a horn blast or a squeal of brakes. The car running the red light simply roared into the intersection and hit the driver's side of the patrol car with a sickening crash. The patrol car spun into the next lane and was hit on the other side by a car that couldn't stop in time. Then there was deathly silence.

Jimmy straightened up from the floor of the patrol car. Santangelo and Small were very still; there was blood on Small's head. And the back door had popped open in the crash.

With his cackling laugh, still handcuffed, Jimmy jumped out of the back seat and ran as the stunned bystanders and other drivers began picking up cell phones and going to check on the injured.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

When the doorbell rang Piper was crossing the hall, so she answered and let Clara in.

"Sorry I took so long," Clara said. "Inspector Morris insisted on checking the engine and the brakes before he'd let me drive."

"He's a good man," Piper said. "Which, I guess, you know."

Clara smiled as they went down the hall.

"We're pretty sure the demon in your office today was a soul collector, who persuades people to sell their souls," Phoebe told Clara. "Obviously, your healing work and giving people hope is bad for his business. The bad news is that he'll keep talking people into coming after you until we vanquish him. The good news is that he won't walk in and kill you himself."

"Is there a vanquish?" Piper asked.

"There's a potion," Phoebe said, "but we can't summon him. A soul collector can only be summoned by a person who's sold his soul."

"Luckily, we know someone who has. Will he do us any good in jail?"

"If he's angry enough about being promised money and power and ending up in jail, he might," Leo said.

"Even if he gets out," Phoebe said as the doorbell rang, "we might be able to trick Jimmy into summoning the collector."

Paige was going to the hall. "I'll get it!"

She peered at the person standing before the door, made a face, and opened the door.

"I have a legitimate reason for being here," Cole Turner said.

"I hope so."

"An attorney in our office has a client who practices Wicca. Her ex-husband is trying to get custody of their kid on that ground alone. The client won't deny her religion, so her lawyer asked me if I know a respectable Wiccan to testify on our client's behalf."

"And you said we would?"

"Heaven forbid." Cole's mouth quirked. "I can just see a demon attacking the courtroom and Piper blowing up the judge's bench. No. But I thought you might know some nice, non-supernatural Wiccan who can testify that it's – a – peaceful, nature-centered, matriarchal, spiritual practice. You know, just something to convince the judge that our client won't have the kid on an altar with a goat's head next week."

"Thank you for that lovely image. Actually, wait. I think I do know someone. Let me get my address book. Phoebe?" Paige yelled down the hall. "Is it OK if Cole comes in?"

After a pause Phoebe called back, "OK."

There was a slight relaxation on Cole's face as he stepped into the hall and walked to the parlor door with Paige. "I'll be back in a moment," she said to the room.

Cole's gaze went directly to Phoebe, who gave him a guarded, masked look as she said, "Clara, this is Cole Turner, my ex-husband."

Only then did Cole notice the others in the room. He smiled charmingly. "Pleased to meet – "

Clara's head was turned and lowered, and she was quivering slightly.

"Clara?" Piper stood beside her. "Are you OK?"

Clara put her hand over her mouth. She was making the little sounds in her throat of someone fighting nausea.

"Not the response I usually get from women," Cole said.

Phoebe looked directly into his eyes. "She can see souls."

The smile fell off Cole's face.

Leo said quietly, "Maybe if you waited in the hall – "

"No. Please don't leave on my account. I'm sorry." Clara smiled at Cole and went to him, shaking his hand, and you could only faintly see the effort that it took for her to do it. "I'm Clara Karnes."

There was then a moment of embarrassed silence while everyone tried to think of something to say. They could hear Paige coming down the stairs and then heard the phone in the kitchen chirp. "Got it!" Paige called.

"So!" Cole said to Clara. "Are you – uh – demon-spotting for the Halliwells?"

"Actually she's already spotted one," Piper said. "A soul collector wants her dead."

"A soul collector! They're nasty. Very sly bunch. But you – you work with the Charmed Ones, they'll keep you safe." Cole tried another smile on Clara, which faded as she still continued staring at him with a look that was both clinical and pitying.

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Jimmy Haines careened from one back alley to another until he felt well removed from the accident scene. Then he stood still and called, "Anders? Anders!"

The air shimmered, and the demon appeared.

"Where were you, man? They arrested me!"

"And I released you, didn't I? Turn around."

Jimmy did, and Anders touched the handcuffs, which fell off.

"That's more like it," Jimmy said, turning, impressed but still resentful. Then his eyes widened. Anders was holding a stack of hundred-dollar bills twice as big as the last one, and this time, when Jimmy grabbed it, the money didn't turn into anything else.

"Scot-free, Jimmy," Anders said softly. "Go anywhere you want, do anything you want. When you need more, call me."

Jimmy was stuffing the money into different pockets. "You bet I will. Pleasure doing business with you."

Anders disappeared in another shimmer. Jimmy ran to the head of the alley, looked both directions, laughed again and took off.


	4. The Son and the Heir

_The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Leo Wyatt, Darryl Morris, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc. _

Paige came back into the parlor, looking disgusted. "That was Darryl on the phone. A woman out for a nice afternoon drunk drive rammed the patrol car carrying Jimmy Haines. The officers will be OK, but they were injured and knocked unconscious. Jimmy escaped."

"Damn!" Piper said. She looked up at Leo. "What do you want to bet the drunk driver has a cage of fire around her soul?"

"We'll never know now," Paige said grimly. "She's dead."

There was a moment of cold silence.

"He's efficient, you have to give him that," Phoebe said. "We might have had two leads to the soul collector. One of them's dead, one of them's missing."

"Maybe the police will pick up Jimmy fast," Leo said.

"And if they don't? We can't pull the bait-and-freeze number again. The police are going to wonder why these wackos keep trying to kill Clara when Darryl just happens to be there."

"One thing's for sure," Phoebe said, "the collector's going to keep sending wackos after her until we vanquish him."

"Can you take Clara someplace safe until we can get to the collector?" Piper asked Leo, but Leo's gaze was suddenly abstracted.

"No," he said, "I can't. The Elders are calling."

"Can you just drop her off before you – "

"Sorry. Emergency." He gave her an apologetic look and orbed out.

"I swear they do that on purpose," Piper said.

"I'll orb her someplace," Paige offered.

"You'd need to stay with her, though. There's a demon after her, it's not like we can drop her at a – safe house in Jersey and leave her alone there."

"I hate splitting up," Phoebe said.

"Me too," Paige said, "but from the way you described Jimmy I doubt if it'll take the cops long to find him."

"Yeah, he wasn't Mensa material," Piper confirmed. "OK. Clara, grab some magazines or books and I'll package up some sandwiches for you. Paige, have you got any ideas – "

"No," Clara said, quietly but firmly.

They all turned to her. She was still looking at Cole.

"No," she repeated. "I won't leave him."

Cole gave the sisters an almost panicked look and then tried a third smile on Clara. "Really, I don't need – "

"You don't know what you need," she said with quiet authority. "I've never seen such a mangled soul. I'm a healer. Let me help you."

"Clara, he's evil," Phoebe said. "You can't help him."

"I don't believe that."

"Help him later," Piper said. "If the soul collector kills you, you won't be able to help anyone. Hide now, heal later."

"I can't!" Clara faced them all. "You're not seeing what I'm seeing. Would you, would you run away to save your own lives if someone were – lying on the floor here, conscious and grotesquely mutilated?"

In the pause Cole said mildly, "I resent that."

"I'm not going anywhere until he and I have at least one good talk."

"Uh – sister conference!" Paige piped up. "Kitchen? Now? Talk among yourselves," she said, grinning broadly at Cole, who was backing away from Clara as though he were a little nervous.

"OK," she said to her sisters when they were in the kitchen. "Here's the deal. We get Cole to take Clara someplace safe and protect her."

"Are you insane?" Phoebe inquired in a polite tone.

"Not about this. Phoebe, ask Cole to take Clara somewhere safe. Tell him to humor her, let her think she's doing him some good, but to keep his eye out for assassins. The soul collector's a non-killer, and if anyone else tries anything – as powerful as Cole is now – " Paige shrugged – "sound asleep, he could kill Carlos the Jackal."

"And if Clara annoys him, he could kill her in his sleep," Phoebe said.

"That's why you talk to Clara," Paige said to Piper. "Tell her we've been trying to get Cole some help, us getting him to protect her is a great excuse to let her treat him, but warn her not to say anything bad about Phoebe."

Piper and Phoebe exchanged looks.

"You know Cole keeps trying to horn in and help us," Paige said. "You know Clara wants to help him. Let her think she's doing some good. With all three of us working to track down Jimmy and the collector, it shouldn't take long. She's no threat to Cole, and he won't kill her just for fun. Even when he was the Source, he didn't kill just for fun."

"We can't let her take that risk," Phoebe said.

"You know, I think we have to," Piper said. "You can tell she's determined to treat him, and I think if we kicked him out now she'd follow him until he gave her a chance. I'm with Paige. Let her think she's doing some good while she's hiding."

Her face still concerned, Phoebe nodded.

"All right, break," Paige said, and in unison they turned back to the parlor.

"Cole, can I have a word with you?" Phoebe said, pulling him to one side.

Piper walked Clara in the other direction. "All right, Clara, you've got a deal. We'll let you treat Cole if you'll let him take you someplace safe until the collector's vanquished. But you have to know that he's half-demon, and he has an incredibly violent past."

Clara nodded.

"All right, I'll do it," Cole said to Phoebe. "What's Piper telling her over there?"

"She's saying that protecting Clara is just an excuse, and what we really want is for you to have a healthy soul."

"Is that what you want?"

Phoebe looked at the floor. It was five full seconds before she said, "I just don't let myself hope for it anymore, Cole."

"No, I won't insult Phoebe," Clara said with a smile. "Honestly, Piper, you act like I'd never seen anyone dangerous before."

"And you act like you feel sorry for him, which is – nice – " Piper said, "but – You like metaphors, right? You think you're treating a wounded dog, which is risky. But you're really treating a man-eating lion, and while you're bandaging his paw he could turn and rip your guts out." She blinked. "Actually, that last part's not metaphorical."

"Will she do it?" Cole said, stepping away from Phoebe. For those who knew him, his face was never funnier than when he was feigning humility. "Will she let me protect her while she treats my soul?"

"Do you have a card for that attorney representing the Wiccan?" Paige asked Cole. "I'll have my friend give him a call."

"Where will we go?" Clara asked, as Cole produced a business card from nowhere and handed it to Paige.

"Well – if we're keeping you away from human killers – " He glanced downward.

"If that means what I think it does, it's the worst possible place for you," she said briskly. "We need someplace quiet and close to nature."

"Quiet, and close to nature," he mused. "Got it. 'Bye now!" His put his hand on Clara's shoulder, and they disappeared in a shimmer of the air.

"Oh, God, I hope he didn't just shimmer her to the North Pole," Phoebe said with a touch of humor in her voice.

"All right, let's get to work," Paige said. "How do we find Jimmy?"

"To begin with," said Piper, heading for the phone, "we call Darryl back and ask if he knows where Jimmy hangs out."

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The air shimmered in a forest clearing, and a moment later Cole and Clara were standing there. Sunlight played on the forest floor between shadows of tree branches so high it seemed that the sun could graze them as it went over. Except for birdsong and occasional soft forest rustles, there was perfect quiet.

"Where are we?" Clara whispered.

"The Sequoia National Forest."

"Perfect," she said, and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again seconds later, a snug, new-looking log cabin was in the clearing with them.

"Oh – you can't! I mean, it's marvelous. But this is a national forest, and -"

"You haven't spent much time around magic, have you? No one can see it. No one can get into it. And when I'm gone, no one will ever know it was here." Cole grinned. "Kind of like my mangled mutilated soul."

Clara drew a breath and looked at Cole straight on, and he realized again, with an odd pang, how repulsive she found him.

"What happened to you?" she asked.

"Well, I'm evil. Didn't you hear Phoebe? It's become part of her standard introduction. 'Hello, I'm Phoebe Halliwell, my husband is evil.'"

There were tears in her eyes again. "What happened to you?"

The expression on his face hardened. "If you knew, you'd cry for my victims, not for me."

"I can cry for all of you. What happened to you?"

He looked at her in silence for a moment, as if deciding what to do. There was a veranda that ran around all four sides of the cabin, and he leaned back against the railing, folded his arms, and began:

"I get my human soul and human name from my father, who was apparently a very good man who married rashly. My mother was a demon. When I was – maybe two, I don't remember – my mother killed my father and took me to Hell to raise me as a demon named Belthazor."

He paused a moment to let that sink in. "When I was nine, my mother was vanquished by a good witch. I tracked down the witch and killed her. This performance brought me to the attention of the Source of All Evil. Which, incidentally, he wasn't." Cole smiled briefly. "He was merely a very upper-level demon with varied ways of instilling obedience."

"Nine?" she whispered.

"Magical children grow up fast. And I was precocious, when it came to violence. The Source took me under his – claw – and taught me almost everything he knew about evil. Not really as a successor, he didn't intend to die. But even demons enjoy the vanity of having a chip off the old block. So, between my mother and the Source, I am the son and the heir to evil."


	5. Hope, Grief, and Vamping

_The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Leo Wyatt, Darryl Morris, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc. _

"You say that without any flicker of pride. Either the good kind or the bad kind."

"Simple statement of fact."

"Then why are you standing here talking to a soul healer?"

He sighed. "I met Phoebe.

"For a hundred years I was the Source's loyal assassin and enforcer. Loyalty isn't a demonic trait, by the way. It was a part of my human aspect, which the Source found useful. My understanding of human nature let me get close to humans in a way no other demon could, which the Source also found useful. About four years ago the Charmed Ones started becoming a problem, and every demon who was sent up against them, they vanquished. I volunteered to get close to them, and figure out how to kill them.

"I tried to – When I first – When I realized – how I felt about her, Phoebe, I tried to – think of her as a sacrifice. I would sacrifice what I loved to that which I believed in."

"But you didn't."

"Couldn't. Neither could she. When they caught on to me she had a chance to vanquish me, and didn't. The Source considered that I'd turned against him, and for awhile I was on the run from the forces of both good and evil."

He turned his back and stepped up onto the veranda, beginning to walk slowly.

"Hope is interesting to see," Clara said, following him. "It brightens the soul. This is the first time I've seen it in you. But it sounds like you were in a desperate situation."

"I was. But I was certain that I could overcome whatever the Source threw at me, and I was certain that I could eventually win Phoebe's love. And I did. And then –

" – Does grief affect the soul?"

"Yes. But it affects different souls in different ways. Some buckle a little, some a lot. Some, eventually, expand. Their suffering opens them to other suffering souls."

"Phoebe and Piper had an older sister. Prudence." That flashing smile again. "If you'd known her, you'd smile at her name too. The Source killed her, and without the power of a third sister, Phoebe and Piper were very vulnerable to upper-level demons. It was the worst time of Phoebe's life. It was the best time of mine."

She remained impassive, as if daring him to curdle her blood. "Because she needed you?"

"Because they both did. Because I felt connected to someone and something. Because, for the first time in my life, I was putting my demonic abilities to work for my human soul instead of my human abilities working for demonic goals. I saved their lives, you know. Several times."

"What happened?"

A muscle in his jaw rippled. "Paige happened. Once Phoebe and Piper found their half-sister, they didn't need me any more. Three Charmed Ones together are more powerful than any – " he gestured vaguely – "several demons. Then I lost my demonic powers, and of course I was no use to Phoebe at all. Better to be a demon with full powers than a human being with none."

"I disagree," Clara said quietly.

Cole looked at her, a little startled. She'd been so accepting of everything he'd said until now that he'd started thinking he was doing a soliloquy.

"A man, even with no supernatural powers, always has the ability to be constructive – to create, to build. From what you're telling me, a demon, even with enormous powers, can only be destructive."

Cole looked for a moment as if this was a new thought. Then his eyes narrowed a little. "What if destruction is all you're good for?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I cannot believe I am letting you do this," Paige whispered to Piper as they walked down the sidewalk together. Actually Paige was walking; Piper was sashaying, decked out in short skirt, low-cut blouse, and strappy high heels.

"You're not letting me do anything. I'm doing it, and you're backup. Phoebe doesn't want to do the vamp routine, and she's working on the vanquishing potion anyway. I never get to vamp, and you vamped last time."

"First, I wasn't pregnant! I know you're not showing yet, but ick! And second, I vamped nice road workers! You're vamping lowlifes in a sleazy bar!"

Piper looked at the chipped painted lettering on a small square window next to a battered door. "Ah. Said sleazy bar."

"If Darryl had known what you were going to do when he gave you the name of this place – if LEO knew what you were doing – "

Piper patted her arm. "Honey, relax. I'll be out in a few minutes. If there's a grabber I'll freeze the room; if there's a demon I'll blow him up."

"And then Leo will blow me up," Paige mumbled as Piper sauntered into the bar.

It was the same bar where Anders and Jimmy had struck their deal just hours before, but Piper didn't know that, of course. There were a lot more people at the tables and the bar than there had been earlier, but there was still room for her to slide between two men and lean forward on the bar, her crossed arms framing her cleavage nicely.

She didn't think she'd have to try to get the bartender's attention, and she didn't; he came right over. "What can I get you?"

"I'm looking for an old boyfriend of mine," she said. "Jimmy Haines?"

The man to her right and the bartender both chuckled; the man to her left, she was pretty sure, was asleep. "Go on back to the station house, honey," the bartender said. "I told the uniforms earlier and I'll tell you now, I don't know where he is."

"Do I look like a cop to you?" she said, aiming the question at the man on her right.

"Honey, I don't care what you are, you look pretty damn good to me."

"Well, thank you." The bartender had just put a jar of olives on the bar, and she had to fight a sudden urge to eat 10 or 12 of them. Maybe she'd have some later, with some mandarin orange slices. She leaned a little closer to her prey. "I heard Jimmy came into a little money."

"And you want to help him spend it?"

She nodded demurely. "Was he in today?"

"A little while ago." The man, ignoring death rays from the bartender, dug into his pocket and showed her a hundred-dollar bill. She let her eyes go wide, as with avarice. "He was throwing these around like an idiot, a couple hours ago. Said he had new friends in high places. I thought, yeah, high, that's the word for it, but it's hard to argue with the real thing." He popped the bill between his fingers.

"Did he say where he was going?"

"Mm. I don't want to get him into trouble."

"I'll do you a big favor," she murmured.

Clearly he didn't believe her; just as clearly he wanted to stay on the good side of this pretty, sweet-smelling creature. "Yeah? What kind?"

"Where's Jimmy?"

He looked her over again and laughed. "Oh, the hell with it. I don't care if you are a cop. What's he ever done for me? When he was in earlier, there was a lady sitting right where you are now. Jimmy started throwing around money, and all of a sudden he had himself a new girlfriend."

"He should've called me! The whole reason I broke up with him was because he could never pay for anything!"

"Well, he can pay for something now. He told the girl he had a connection with some great stuff, and she told him to come right up when he got it."

"Come right up where?"

The man hesitated again, and Piper leaned a little further forward, smiling. "Come on. I just want my fair share. I gave him a lot, you know."

"Well – " He shrugged. "She said it was a pink apartment building around the corner, upstairs, number 122."

"Thank you." She cupped his chin gently with her hand. "And now the big favor."

She turned his head, put her lips near his dirty ear, and whispered, "If Jimmy's friend who got all the money for him comes around and wants to make a deal with you, say no. Say no absolutely. Unless you want to roast on a barbecue spit in Hell for a few thousand years."

He laughed. She looked into his eyes, dead serious. "Believe me. Biggest favor anyone will do you this year." She patted his shoulder and was off, using a gait as businesslike as the skirt and shoes would allow.

Outside, Paige, anxious because the dark glass of the window didn't allow a good view inside the bar, was trying to smash her ear against the doorjamb as subtly as possible. She was so intent on listening for any sound of trouble that a raspy voice behind her almost startled her into orbing. "Hey, baby! You like parties?"

Paige spun and saw a man whose seamy, debauched look indicated that he liked parties a whole lot. She widened her eyes, tapped the doorjamb where she'd been listening, and said with great intensity, "Ants! Ants in the walls! Why didn't I see it before? They're in the walls of buildings, they're on the ground outside – they can hear everything! They're the ones giving information to the aliens!" She pointed at the man, and he took a step back. "Call the White House. Tell them to fumigate. I'm gathering evidence." She smashed her ear back up against the doorjamb.

After a moment the man passed by, mumbling "You're messed up" – or words to that effect.

The door began opening and Paige leaped away as Piper came out. "Finally! If you were in there any longer, I was going to set you up with a date."

"He's around the corner, and let's hurry," Piper murmured. "That idiot was in here earlier flashing money and talking about buying drugs. He's pleading to be robbed."


	6. Nature or Nurture

_The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Leo Wyatt, Darryl Morris, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc. _

Cole had a fireball in his hand, and Clara screamed, "No!"

"Why not?" he asked.

"These trees are irreplaceable. If you started a fire here – "

"Demonic fire doesn't work that way. It completely consumes what it hits in a few seconds, and then vanishes. It doesn't burn anything else. Just leaves a scorch mark where the target was." There was a slightly cruel smile on his face. "See, I could take out – that tree, completely – and leave the others untouched."

"Why do you enjoy causing fear?"

He gave her a look that would have made a lesser person run for cover. Then he calmed himself and closed his fist around the fireball, extinguishing it. "In the blood, I guess."

"Or force of habit?"

"Well, now, that's the question, isn't it?" He swung himself over the veranda railing and began pacing the ground. "Nature or nurture? Ask any of the Charmed Ones, they'll tell you I was born evil and I can't be anything but evil in the end, no matter how hard I try."

"How hard have you tried?"

He gave her a sardonic glance. "Depends on when you're talking about."

"That period of time you were talking about, after Prudence's death, it sounds like you were trying hard then."

"I was. I reined in demonic impulses very well. And then, of course, when I lost my powers, I could relax even more on that score."

"The demonic impulses go with the powers?"

"To a certain degree. You know, Ms. Karnes, there are plenty of human beings who have demonic impulses with no demonic powers at all."

"Oh, I know. Please, call me Clara." She pulled herself up to perch on the veranda railing. "So, why do you blame Paige for ending that period in your life? Did she get your powers back?"

He laughed. "Oh, no." Then after a moment, "No."

"How did you get your powers back?"

He ducked his head and gave her a wheedling look Phoebe would have recognized. "It wasn't my fault."

"But it wasn't Paige's fault either, was it?"

He snarled. "You think you're just the cleverest little girl in class, don't you, Clara?"

"I'm talking to a human being named Cole Turner. I'm not interested in what any demon has to say."

After a long moment when their gazes locked, Cole laughed and turned away. "You have the guts of a bomb-squad guy, you know that."

"What happened?"

"The Source took Piper's and Paige's powers. Phoebe's powers – premonition and levitation – they're not much good in a fight. All the Source had to do was launch one good attack – hell, one middling attack – and they were dead, all three. I didn't know how they were going to get out alive. They didn't know how they were going to get out alive.

"I was given a way to absorb the Source's powers, and I got back to the girls in time to intercept – " he opened his hand to show an energy ball – "one of these, aimed at Phoebe. I absorbed it – absorbed all of his powers – turned it right back on him and kept him at bay while the Charmed Ones recited the spell that wiped him out."

Clara looked away.

"Sorry, am I making you sick again?"

"It's just – you're like strobe light right now, and it's hard – There's pride, that makes sense, saving lives, and something like – peace, but not – satisfaction, I think. It flickers in you when you talk about killing, not really fun, just – craftsmen get it, pride in their work and intolerance for having it done another way. Re-route that, if we can – But there's shame, too. Because you helped to kill him?"

"Am I ashamed because I helped kill the Source of All Evil?" He drew the question out, making it as ridiculous sounding as possible.

"Because you killed your mentor. The closest thing you knew to a father."

Now it was Cole who looked slightly ill. "Please, Clara. Don't sentimentalize Hell. Demons don't feel family ties or love, or passion for anything but their own gain. Demons don't need daddies."

"Humans do."

After a long moment, he said, "That's not why I'm ashamed."

"Why then?"

"I expelled all of the other powers the Source had absorbed. Piper got hers back, Paige hers. But the Source's own powers – with nowhere else to go – "

" – remained in you."

"And overwhelming demonic impulses."

"Forgive me, this is all new to me – Couldn't the girls have cast some sort of spell to take it out of you? A potion, or – "

"Being the Charmed Ones, they probably could have. If I'd told them about it."

"Why didn't you?"

"I tried. The Source was very strong. Of course, I'm very strong too. A very weird time. I could hear my own voice screaming in protest inside my own mind, my own mouth talking about Cole Turner in the third person – and at the same time it felt comfortable. It felt damn good, in a way, if you want to know the truth. I'm half demon. I need demonic powers. And the Source's powers – You actually are looking at a former ruler of Hell, Clara. I was good at killing efficiently and good at inspiring awe. I was so good I got Phoebe to marry Cole Turner and stay with me as the new Source. When you look at Phoebe Halliwell, you're looking at a former Queen of Hell."

She looked startled, as she may well have. "That's the guilt."

"That's Phoebe. My bride. My passion. My queen. My existence. My wife."

"Except that she introduces you as her ex-husband."

Cole stood directly in front of Clara, looking into her eyes. "Phoebe's will to do good is as strong as mine is to do evil. Stronger. People look at her and think, 'Oh, how cute,' and they have no idea."

"She left you."

"Rejoined her sisters, and then, of course, they had to vanquish me."

She damn near fell off the railing. "Vanquish? Isn't that like – killed?"

He gave a laugh that could only be described as demonic. "Very much like."

She just stared at him.

"Demons don't have souls. When they're vanquished, their consciousness, their individuality, is burned away on a different plane, a vast empty demonic wasteland. That's how the Source and my soul got separated. My soul remained whole; all that's left of a demon is a magical residue of powers, some basic drives and motivations. Later I discovered that my human soul could absorb that residue, and since I was the only soul there – "

"You were there alone?"

"There aren't other demons with souls," he shrugged. "Actually, I've heard rumors of one or two in Southern California, but in that dimension, my soul was completely alone."

She shivered. "Worse than Hell."

"Much worse. And time moves differently in different planes. In some it goes more quickly, and in some – Of course, without senses you can only guess at the movement of time. But I figure I was there for fifty years or so, feeding on the magical residue of vanquished demons, absorbing their powers, occasionally speculating which of the poor bastards had been sent there by the woman I loved. Eventually I was so powerful that I walked right back into the realm of the living."

"Walked – you mean – "

"Metaphorically. Oh, the body. That's interesting. First place I went was my apartment, where I'd been vanquished. Vanquishing is usually a fairly neat process – you get your occasional lower-level demon who explodes with green slime, but most of us just – atomize. However, I was able to find three little drops of my blood, on a dark table, where they'd been missed in the cleanup. From those, I re-created my own body."

"Magical cloning."

"I pulled my body on around myself like comfortable old clothes. There appear to be one or two anomalies – apparently my blood eats holes in metal now – but other than that . . .

"I came back to Phoebe a few months ago, in time to save her from being gunned down by a madman, and the only thing I could see on her face, when she saw me, was fear."

"You've saved her life many times."

"Yes," he said, and you didn't have to see souls to see the pride on his face. Then it faded. Then came the accustomed cynical smile. "On the other hand, I also tried to damn her soul for all eternity. How do you figure that tips the scales?"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It wasn't a robbery, after all.

When Piper and Paige approached the door of apartment 122 it was slightly ajar. They pushed it open silently and crept in, looking all directions. Piper kept her hands slightly in front of her.

A young blonde woman, whose face was both youthful and somehow haggard, was lying on the sofa in the front room, tracing patterns on the coffee table in white powder that had spilled from a small clear bag. She was murmuring, and showed no sign that she knew they were there. At the far end of the front room were three more doors.

Piper opened one of them and froze a closet full of clothes piled on the floor. She shrugged, and each of them took one of the remaining doors.

Paige found herself in a grimy bathroom and had just checked the tub when she heard Piper call her, quietly but urgently.

Jimmy Haines was lying on the bed in the bedroom, eyes open, perfectly still. A hypodermic needle rested on the tips of his fingers.


	7. Soul Trackers

_The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Leo Wyatt, Darryl Morris, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc. _

Paige felt for a pulse in Jimmy's neck and Piper for one in his wrist, but it was pretty clear.

"Overdose, I think," Paige said. "He's gone."

"All the money in the world," Piper said, "and all the freedom to spend it."

"You think the soul collector guessed this would happen?"

"I think he was counting on it."

Paige nodded. "Now what do we do?"

"Wait a little. Maybe his soul's still around here somewhere, and the collector will come for it. Of course, Phoebe has the potion back at the Manor, but maybe –"

Paige was shaking her head. "The collector came and went."

"Already? The body's still warm."

"That was part of the research we were doing this afternoon when you were eating lunch. When someone agrees to sell his soul, the collector puts some kind of magical substance on him. Souls are more individual than fingerprints, and this magical goop finds a soul's impression through the physical body. It acts like a homing device, lets a collector know when a client is calling, and most importantly when the client's dead. The collector gets to the client in seconds by following the track of the soul."

"Well. That's it, then."

"I'll put in an anonymous call to 911, tell them what's happened here."

"Don't forget to wrap something around the phone – Paige! The collector took Jimmy's soul with him?"

"Right."

"Do you suppose that demonic homing device is still working?"

"You mean – could we follow the track of Jimmy's soul to the collector?"

"That's what I'm wondering."

"No idea. It's worth a shot." Paige thought for a moment, then said:

"The thing the collector has known,

We command that to us it be shown.

With the start in this place,

This soul we must trace.

Reveal it to our eyes alone."

A murky orange glow rose from Jimmy's body and narrowed, about six inches over his chest, to a zig-zag line of light that made its jagged way out the door of the room.

"Very nice," Piper said.

"Thank you." A pink camisole was on the night stand next to the telephone, and Paige put it over her hand to lift the receiver.

"Rhymed couplets you have problems with, but you can improvise a limerick spell?"

Paige smiled back at her. "I know a lot of limericks."

"I never knew that."

"Most of 'em I can't say in front of Leo. – Hello, 911?"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Why Phoebe?" Clara asked.

"Have you seen her?"

"Yes, I have. Is she the only beautiful woman to whom you've ever had access?"

"No."

"Why Phoebe?"

"You should have known her when I first knew her. She threw herself into everything passionately, physically, emotionally. She was impulsive and light-hearted and trusting."

"She's changed, hasn't she?"

He couldn't meet her gaze. "Yes."

"But you still love her."

"I always will."

"Why? Why Phoebe?"

Irritably, "I don't know, Clara, but you obviously have a theory. Why don't you tell me?"

"I think you just told me, a few moments ago. The thing that hasn't changed about her is an indomitable will to do good, even if it means giving up power, even if it means giving up love, even if it means admitting that she sinned. I think the human part of you was drawn to that."

"Mm. Maybe. Did you ever wonder why Phoebe was drawn to me?"

She smiled a little. "You obviously have a theory."

"On some level, she knew I was evil. Phoebe's got a wide dark streak in her. Did you see that in her soul? She was a trouble-maker in high school and a hell-raiser in New York. She rejects authority and did her best to get sensual pleasure without consequences."

"But you're not telling me that she's doomed to be demonic. In fact, you just went to some pains to tell me that she has a strong will to do good."

"What applies to her doesn't necessarily apply to me. We're different people."

"Are you? Isn't it possible that what drew Phoebe to you was that – on some level, as you say – she knew that her soul and yours faced the same kinds of conflict?"

"That's a comfy-cozy thought, Clara. Then why did I do my best to destroy her, instead of our marching off to Heaven together arm in arm?"

Clara chose her words carefully; she was brave, not stupid. "I am certain that you loved each other in the beginning. I wonder, if you'll pardon me, if what you felt for her later was less love than – addiction."

This was, she knew, exactly the kind of thing Piper had warned her not to say. She tried to look him in the eyes and avoid checking his hands to see if one of those horrible weapons was in them.

To her surprise he simply said, "What's the difference?"

"Oh! All the difference in the world! Love requires that you want what's best for the other person, even if that means walking away from them. I'm sure that several of those times when you saved her life you put your own life at risk. Love requires that you do the same thing emotionally and mentally, as well as physically."

"You sound like Morris. I can only show that I love her by not seeing her?"

"At least until you've worked through this addiction to her, which is one of the burdens crushing your soul."

"Well, Clara, you've just put yourself in serious danger, because without Phoebe humanity holds nothing for me, and I might as well go completely demonic right now."

After a moment she said, "Nothing? – Tell me about Piper."

There was a funny moment of real confusion on his face. "Phoebe's sister?" he asked, like there were a lot of Pipers.

"Yes."

"I think Leo would object if I had a run at Piper."

She laughed. "I didn't tell you to fall in love with her. I asked you to describe her."

"Uh – smart. Tough. She used to have a lot less self-confidence, you know. After Prue's death she damn near fell apart, and then she pulled herself together by main force and kept going. Earth-mother type, underneath. Always feeding people. Mad for Leo."

"You respect her."

"I suppose."

"And Leo?"

He laughed. "What's to respect? He's an angel. It's easy for him to be a good boy. – I will say, he stood up to the Elders when they wanted to split him and Piper. Can't be easy to talk back to higher-level angels who could orb you to Tibet if they wanted to, but he just – "

He stared off, seeing something else, and sighed.

"– he wouldn't be separated from her."

After a moment she said, "So there is something to respect about him too."

"Are you going somewhere with this? Because I hate this discussion."

"You said that humanity could hold nothing for you without Phoebe. But you're obviously capable of respecting at least some others. Finding people you respect, and earning their respect in return, can be a basis for a truly good human life."

He looked at her, a flicker of interest on his face. Then his gaze dropped. "I suppose it could be."

"But?"

"But I was a demon for more than a century, Clara. I know a hell of a lot more about getting fear than about getting respect."


	8. Phoebe's Choice

_The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Leo Wyatt, Darryl Morris, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc. _

Phoebe was in the kitchen at the Manor, cutting the thorns off of a white rose on a cutting board. A small cauldron sat on the counter nearby, its contents slowly churning for no visible reason. She had the cell phone clamped between her ear and her shoulder as she worked. "Well, I'm glad we've still got a lead, but isn't it hard to follow the track of the soul in a car?"

"Uh – not really," Piper said. She was on the cell phone in the car, Paige was driving; the track of Jimmy Haines' soul stretched down the street ahead of them and flowed through the car as they followed it, between the two of them, just above seat level.

"What if the collector shimmers somewhere?"

"Then we're screwed," Piper said, "but so far he seems to like conventional transportation."

"Taxi, is my guess," said Paige.

"OK, so you know the plan if we find him?" Piper asked.

"You freeze him, Paige orbs him here, I hit him with the potion. Tinker to Evers to Chance."

"How's the potion coming?"

Phoebe whisked the thorns off the cutting board into her hand and tossed them in the potion. With the sound of a small explosion, a cloud of smoke and a tongue of flame leaped out of the cauldron. "Dinner is served."

"Great. You know we may not be able to phone you first if we catch up to him, so be prepared for us to orb in any time."

"I'll take a vial to the bathroom if I have to." Phoebe grinned and disconnected.

There was a knock on the door.

Phoebe looked up. There was no reason why the collector should be here. Still, preparedness doesn't hurt. She grabbed the first container she saw, a coffee mug, dipped it into the cauldron for a splash of the potion, and went down the hall with it.

She peered through the glass panel to see who was there. The man who had stormed out of Clara's office that morning looked back at her, and they recognized each other at the same time.

Phoebe put a fake smile on her face, shifted the mug to her left hand, and reached for the door handle with her right.

Before she could touch it, the door slammed open with supernatural force, hitting Phoebe in the face and knocking her against the wall and down.

Anders stepped into the hall, closed the door behind him. Phoebe reached for the mug that had been knocked out of her hand; there might still be a few drops in it, and a few drops might be enough. But Anders saw what she was doing, and the mug went flying down the hall, smashing against the wall. "Nasty stuff," said the soul collector.

"Wait a minute," Piper said. "This looks familiar."

"Sure, this is a great neighborhood. The lady who taught me to read tarot cards used to live around here."

"No, I mean like from this afternoon," Piper said as they passed Jingle's Original Jewelry. "Paige, find a place to park. He's headed for Clara's office."

Of course that's never easy when you need it to be, and rush hour made it even harder. But eventually Paige squeezed into a quasi-legal space and they hit the sidewalk, going as fast as Piper could in her ridiculous shoes.

The door to Clara's office was ajar, just as the blonde girl's had been. Again, they pushed the door open silently and crept in, keeping a wary eye out. Again, there was no soul collector present – just Clara's property and the glowing orange zig-zag floating through the air to both doors in the back wall.

Piper checked the bathroom. Paige looked out the back door, which led to a street where cars were parked. Jimmy's zig-zag flowed down that street.

"No sign of him," she told Piper, who was standing by the soul track in the bathroom, "but the track goes out that way."

Piper was looking down at a little three-shelved stand next to the sink. The top shelf held a box of Kleenex and a comb and brush.

"How much of a head start do you suppose he has on us?"

Paige shrugged. "Five minutes, half an hour. Why?"

Piper pointed to a circlet of hair next to the brush. "Even if this hair wasn't on Clara's head at the time, could he put his magical goop on it and track Clara's soul?"

"I don't know, but if he could, he'd be headed – "

" – straight for the Manor," said Piper.

A levitating kick, and Phoebe made crunching contact with Anders' face. He fell, dropping something that looked like a small lantern, and she sailed through the air toward the kitchen door. An etagere rammed into her path and she and it knocked each other down in a hail of knick-knacks and books. Anders grabbed Phoebe's arm and she came up punching, a direct shot to his gut.

He doubled over and she scrambled to her feet, headed for the kitchen again. The air shimmered and he was in front of her, pushing her back into the hall. She staggered away from him and regained her footing in the parlor doorway, raising her hands in a self-defense stance.

Anders looked at two of the books on the hallway floor. They leaped into the air and each closed around one of Phoebe's wrists, pulling her to the parlor wall and pinning her there like manacles. With a look of disbelief, she threw herself forward, using her full weight and strength, but the books may as well have been iron embedded in the wall.

Looking put out, Anders adjusted his cuffs, straightened his tie, and picked up the object he'd dropped in the hall. Only then did he bother to look more closely at Phoebe, and he smiled when he did. "I've been trying to remember all day why you seemed familiar this morning. I should have known. Belthazor's whore."

"Ex-whore," she said dryly. "What, did you get tired of picking on pathetic junkies?"

"So you and your sisters were responsible for Jimmy's arrest? I have to tell you, not the Charmed Ones' most impressive achievement. No, dear. I'm here tracking Clara's soul."

She could not see what he saw; the sky-blue, wave-like track of Clara's soul flowing through the parlor door, over the chair where she'd sat, back near the door where she'd gone to shake Cole's hand, dead-ending near there in a large blue arch.

"How did you ever get such a good little lady to disappear in a demonic shimmer? Not that it matters. I can track a shimmer." He grinned and stepped under the arch, and she could see his body beginning to go translucent.

"Stop!" she said. "I want to make a deal."

He re-solidified, looking like a man who's heard words he can't resist even if he doesn't believe them. He stood in front of her. "You know there's only one kind of deal I'm interested in. Well – " looking her over – "with you, maybe two."

"How about door number three? I have information you need."

He looked baffled for a moment; then, "Oh, I see. Stalling in hopes that one of the others will get here." He laughed and turned toward the same spot again. "No, sweet cheeks, I'm not – "

Then he stopped himself, and when he turned back to Phoebe his face was intrigued. "Is that Belthazor's shimmer?"

– What will keep him here longer, she thought, yes or no? "What do you think?"

"I didn't realize you two were back together."

"We're not."

"Would you like to be?"

For a moment she was genuinely startled, and looked it. Then she deliberately assumed a questioning look. "Could you – You couldn't arrange that."

"Yes. I could. It wouldn't even be that difficult. It's widely known that Belthazor adores you beyond reason. It's also known that your own scruples keep you from letting yourself be with him."

"What would you do? Get rid of my scruples?"

He pulled up a chair, sat down, looked up into her eyes. Quietly he asked, "What good are they to you?"

"They – they keep me in harmony with my sisters. They keep me aligned with the universe. They let me sleep at night."

The soul collector leaned forward and held up his index finger. "If your sisters' love is so conditional that it depends on your following a code of conduct they lay down, it's not really love, is it? How do you know what they'll ask you to give up to them next week – your independence? Your personality? They need to love you for yourself, not for what you sacrifice to them." His fingers were a V. "Haven't you learned yet – after all you've been through – that the universe doesn't give a damn about what you do? Be a saint or a sinner, love a saint or a sinner, human nature remains the same, the world keeps turning." His fingers were a trident. "And I would bet that the best night's sleep you ever got was in your lover's arms. You could have that again."

"Only by giving up my family."

He looked at her blankly for a moment. Then he leaned back, his expression concerned and thoughtful. "Like any demon with brains and a wish to survive, I've learned a lot about the Charmed Ones. Tell me if I have my facts right.

"Your mother was a witch with a great wish to do good in the world. She was killed by a demon when you were two. Your father wanted your magical powers removed so his daughters wouldn't be at risk, but your grandmother's wish to do good was stronger than his will; he left the family when you were young. Your sister Prue was a witch with a great wish to do good in the world; she was killed by a demon two years ago.

"Do you really think that doing good in the world lets you keep your family?"

Phoebe's weight sagged a little in the book-manacles.

"And it's not like you haven't done your part. You've fought the fight, vanquished demons, saved the innocent. You've done everything that anyone could ask. And what do you have to show for it? You're tired. You're grief-stricken. You've driven away the love of your life. All for the forces of good. And in exchange, they've given you –

"Well, what, exactly?"

Phoebe stared at him numbly for a moment. With an effort she roused herself and said, "Love. Belonging."

"Love!" Anders leaned forward. "You killed Belthazor and he still loves you. What more love can anyone show than that? And belonging? Your Majesty, demons desperately need the leadership of you and your husband. There's a place in the cosmos waiting and ready for you, all you have to do is drop into it. The man you love at your side, not having to stifle and struggle with his natural instincts anymore, putting the world at your feet. The richest fabrics, the sweetest foods, the finest homes, supreme power. The most brilliant and exciting beings in the world as your slaves, your confidants, your family. That's where you belong, Your Majesty. Not in this – " he looked around – "chilly empty place, constantly being judged by others."

Phoebe sighed profoundly. Anders stood and stepped in front of her.

"Let me understand." She was whispering so low that his head almost touched hers as he bent to hear her. "If I give you my soul, you take away my conscience."

"And give you the world. For a daytime toy. And long warm hours in your husband's bed at night."

Her eyes wide, she studied his face.

"What other choice do you have?" he murmured.


	9. Free Will

_The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Leo Wyatt, Darryl Morris, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc. _

"You mean, for a family? Other than demons?"

She laughed in his face and he reacted as if she'd kicked him again. His head jerked back, he staggered physically, his eyes glowed red. He grabbed the chair he'd been sitting in and slammed it against the wall using his muscles, not his powers.

Then he calmed himself, his eyes returned to normal, he smiled and shrugged. "The soul of a Charmed One. I had to try."

He headed for the place where Cole and Clara had disappeared.

"Clara!" Phoebe shouted at the ceiling. "Get the potion ready!"

He missed a step. "Nice bluff."

"We sent her on alone, you know. She's got the potion. She can kill you, and there's no one else there who will kill her for you."

He stopped dead, swiveled his head slowly, and gave her an evil smile. "I think there is," he said, and began to shimmer as Piper and Paige orbed into the room.

"Stop him!" Phoebe yelled. Piper raised her hands and Paige tried a desperate tackle, but he was gone and Paige slid across the floor.

The books dropped from the wall and Phoebe's arms dropped to her sides.

"Ow," Paige said.

"Are you all right?" Piper asked.

Paige sat up with a disgusted look on her face. "Yeah. Carpet burn."

Piper turned to Phoebe. "Are you all right?"

"No. I mean, yes, but no. I'm so afraid, Piper. He offered me a deal."

"But of course you said no," Piper said off-handedly, giving no sign of the sick jerk in her stomach.

"Of course I said no, but he's good, you guys, he's really good. He hit all the right notes. I could practically taste what he was offering. I said no because – well, because my soul's in pretty good shape, and I have my sisters, and I can think of a better afterlife than one in Hell. But he's tracking Cole's shimmer now, and Cole –"

" – has a mangled soul, no support system, and no hope of Heaven," Piper said in a dead tone.

Phoebe dropped onto the sofa and put her head in her hands. "If he talks Cole out of his human soul, there won't even be a scorch mark left where Clara was. And we have no idea where to find them. None."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clara leaned her elbows on the veranda railing, looking out through the forest, where sunlight was streaming with a golden slant between tree trunks and over soft moss. A twilight breeze whispered through the forest; the birds were starting to get excited about night coming on. Cole stood next to her with his arms folded, leaning back against the same railing, looking at the cabin.

After a moment he asked, "What am I listening for?"

"Listening to. The silence."

After another moment, "Would I have to do much of this?"

"I'd want you to do at least an hour a day. At least."

"I don't like it."

"People with badly damaged souls don't. Silence forces you to think, to remember. Noise helps you avoid thought." She glanced at him with academic curiosity. "I assume Hell is a noisy place."

"Damned noisy," he said, smiling at the joke.

She smiled a little too. "The good part about having powers like yours is that you wouldn't have to work to find a quiet place close to nature. You could come out here anytime and listen. Eventually, you'd start learning to be at peace with the fact of how small we all are – the purest angels, the most corrupted demons – how small we all are in the face of the one who created us all."

"Bet that's a soul you'd like to see," Cole said flippantly.

Clara indicated the clearing. "You're looking at it."

"No, Clara, you'll notice that I'm not."

"Why not? It's looking at you."

He made a slight, pained grimace.

She turned her back to the clearing, too, so that she could more easily look up at his face. "Don't you believe in forgiveness?"

"There's not enough forgiveness in the universe for the things I've done."

That took her aback for a moment; then she said, "Are you going to tell the universe how much forgiveness it has on hand?"

"Oh, I've got that inventory," said a voice behind them.

Clara spun bodily, Cole turned his head slightly. The soul collector joined them on the veranda as he said, "The universe has zero forgiveness on hand. The upside is, the universe doesn't give a damn what you do anyway."

"Anders!" Cole was grinning with a startling look of welcome. "Are you the scumbag du jour?"

"I'm afraid I am, Your Majesty."

"You're not going to try to talk me into killing Clara here, are you?"

Anders laughed. "As if I could. I've lost interest in her."

"Since when?"

"Since I saw you. If you're involved that means the Charmed Ones are involved, and I value my continued existence. Besides, I have actually important business to discuss with you, sir." Anders flipped his hand at Clara dismissively. "Go. Treat people. Have fun."

"What business?"

"Your Majesty, I talk human beings out of their souls regularly, and I always have to offer them something for it – money usually, power, sex – you know the drill. But sir, I'd like to take your soul away with me today, and I'm not going to offer you anything for it."

Cole looked amused. "Well, that's a novel approach."

"Don't listen to him, Cole. He's not your friend."

"No one is. – Why would I give up my soul, then?"

"Why wouldn't you?" Anders spread his arms, and the lantern-like object dangled from his hand. "Do you know how I see the soul, Your Majesty? As a cancerous growth. All it does is cause pain, remorse, misery. Human beings are inoperable – " he looked levelly at Clara – "if you cut the soul out of them, they cease to exist. But you, sir – you don't need it to go on."

"Leave him alone," Clara said quietly.

"The soul was useful to you once. It's not anymore. It interferes with your work, it keeps you in pain, it blocks your enjoyment. Time to have it out, sir."

"So you are offering something," Cole said. "Relief from pain."

"And fulfillment of your destiny. Yes, I suppose I am."

"Destiny? That's nonsense. He's half human. Why shouldn't he be destined to be human?" Clara turned to Cole. "You can choose what you want to be. You didn't have a choice when you were two years old. You had very little choice when you absorbed the Source's powers to save your friends. But you have a choice now. Tell him to go away."

Anders said blandly, "Clara, relax. I won't ask him to kill you."

"You tell me, Clara," Cole said. "Can you get rid of this constant misery I'm in?"

"No. Not completely. If you'll let me help, if you'll work with me, you can make it better – much better than anything Hell could offer you. Nothing good comes without a struggle."

"You've been struggling, sir. It's futile. There won't be any relief for you until you embrace your destiny."

"Why do you think he's trying to do this to you, Cole? Out of altruism? He's going to get something horrible out of this."

"Well, yes, I hope to get something out of this. I'll have universal acclaim in the demonic realm as the one who restored the Source to his rightful place." Anders was looking at Cole as he spoke. "And the more successful he is, the more powerful he makes us, the more famous I'll be. Yes, I'd like that. That's the kind of evil bastard I am."

"Power won't make up for it," Clara said to Cole. "It won't make up for a life devoted only to yourself, without connection to anything greater than yourself, without love, without warmth. You have free will. You can choose – "

"Free will is a myth perpetrated by powerless mortals to make themselves feel better. You know this inside, Your Majesty. You were a demon for a hundred years because a demon is what you are, and what you always will be."

"Leave him alone!" Clara shouted, and, unbelievably, she stepped between the two men, facing Anders as though she would protect Cole from the demon.

"Clara," Cole said in a tone of amused rebuke.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. "No! It's like watching someone taunt a quadriplegic!" She squared off with Anders again. "Go back to Hell, demon. Leave him alone."

Anders' head tipped back and his eyes narrowed, but his voice was controlled, the sound of a CEO fed up with a junior executive. "Historically, Clara, there have been a few humans who could say 'Go away' to one of us and make it stick. You're not one of them."

With a bang like sudden thunder, a board from the railing sprang up and struck Clara down.

"Uh, I'm the host here," Cole said.

"Forgive me, Your Majesty. I should have asked your permission. She irritated me."

"I have to admit," Cole seemed to be talking as much to himself as to Anders, "it's something of a relief."

"And if you decide you want her conscious later, she'll be awake shortly." Anders indicated the door at the other end of the cabin wall. "This pastoral retreat of yours – it wouldn't happen to have a bar, would it?"

"Anders." Cole looked reproving. "Of course it would."

Anders laughed and waved Cole ahead of him. The two of them went inside, leaving Clara lying unconscious.


	10. Cole's Choice

_The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper and Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, Leo Wyatt, Darryl Morris, and Cole Turner, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc. _

For a few minutes Phoebe scried for Cole, while Piper changed into clothes far better suited for demon-hunting and filled three stoppered vials with vanquishing potion. Paige orbed to Clara's office, picked up the circlet of Clara's hair, got the car and started driving it back to the Manor.

Then for a few minutes Piper scried for Cole, while Paige finished driving to the Manor. Phoebe called Cole's apartment, his law firm, a classy restaurant where he had once taken her, the police, and a couple of hospitals.

Then for a few minutes, using Clara's hair, Paige scried for Clara while Phoebe and Piper brainstormed about what "Quiet, and close to nature" might mean to Cole.

Then, constructively, Paige spent a few seconds banging her forehead with her hand. "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

"I went along with it," Piper said, fingering the small crucifix she was wearing.

"Wait a minute," Phoebe said, seizing the Book of Shadows. "What about – "

And that was when Leo orbed in.

The three rushed to him and started explaining the situation, but he held up his hands and they fell silent. "I know. The Elders know all about it. That was why they pulled me out of here when you asked me to take Clara someplace safe. They wanted to give Clara a chance with Cole."

"Suggesting that next week they'll leave a tricycle on the tracks to give it a chance with an oncoming train," Piper said.

"Do the Elders know where they are?" Phoebe asked.

Leo's expression was grave. "Yes. And they told me to get you there fast."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cole and Anders were sitting in fine leather chairs in the cabin, martini glasses on the coffee table in front of them, laughing. "She had no idea," Cole said.

"None! Went around telling people she was going to be the new Source's mistress!"

"Maleazar." Cole said it as if the name alone amused him. "He's always good for a laugh. What territory is he covering now?"

"None. Vanquished."

"Hmp," Cole said.

"You have no idea how badly you're needed, Your Majesty," Anders said earnestly. "Look what I'm reduced to."

He lifted the little lantern from the floor, and put it on the coffee table before Cole. Behind the glass panes, two tiny spheres of light, one teal and one a murky orange that Piper and Paige would have recognized, moved soddenly.

"Pretty pathetic specimens," Cole said.

"Tell me about it." Anders flicked a finger at the orange one. "Should've heard that one scream when I came for him, you'd have thought he was the Buddha. I said, hey, buddy, you made the deal with me and you injected the drugs. It was your choice, not mine."

There might have been the slightest shadow on Cole's face as he studied the captive souls. "So even a – human like this, had the power to choose his way."

Anders finished his martini. "Hell, yes. Let's not start buying into our own propaganda. Mind if I mix another?"

Cole looked at him without expression, and the smile on Anders' face flickered just a bit. "Of course," he said, standing and moving toward the bar, "they didn't have free will as to whether to be born human or not. Just as you didn't have free will as to whether to be born demonic."

"Half demonic," Cole said absently, "no, I didn't."

"And even if you could choose now, sir," Anders put his glass down and looked straight at Cole, "what kind of a lousy option do you have? That castrating slut out there, what was she trying to push you into? Groveling and fighting to fit into a world that can't handle you. Groveling and fighting to win the love of a woman who doesn't deserve you. That's free will?"

The Charmed Ones and Leo materialized in the forest at the opposite side of the clearing from the cabin. In the moment when they were getting their bearings, they saw Clara pulling herself up by the veranda railing, holding a hand to her head as if it hurt.

"Eternal pain," Anders said. "Or eternal power and unlimited pleasure. What other choice do you have?"

Cole stood, looking thoughtful. "You're right. Wait, I can think of one other. Eternal pain – " there was a fireball in his hand – "with occasional moments of satisfaction."

Phoebe, across the clearing, said, "Clara," and began running toward the cabin, followed by the others.

Then they all leaped back as a fireball screamed out of the cabin door. Actually it wasn't the fireball screaming; it was the demon being consumed by it, writhing and bellowing in pain and rage as he shot across the clearing like a comet.

The comet vanished suddenly. Nothing remained but a scorch mark on the forest floor, across which a squirrel skittered.

"What – " said Paige.

"That was the soul collector," said Phoebe.

Cole came out of the cabin door and went straight to Clara, saying something to her. Clara took her hand off her head and nodded.

Then Cole caught sight of the others standing across the clearing. He said something to Clara and she looked over at them too. She cocked her head as she spoke to Cole, seemed to be asking him a question. Then they both went into the cabin.

Mesmerized, Phoebe moved a few steps forward, the others picking up on her cue a moment later.

Cole came back out of the cabin with something in his hand, bent over the railing and put it on the ground. Then he stood back from the railing, just looking. From her position slightly in front of the others, Phoebe looked back.

The entire cabin began shimmering and disappeared, revealing a sunset-streaked sky, red and gold.

Leo ran for the object on the ground, and this time Phoebe was slightly behind the others.

"Two souls," Leo said, lifting the collector's lantern. "Jimmy and the drunk driver, I assume."

"Can you take them back with you?" Paige asked. "Aren't they, like, damned?"

"I can take them back," Leo said. "The ultimate decision on what to do with them will be made at much higher levels than mine."

Piper cleared her throat. "Leo. Is it possible that I'm wrong, and the Elders sometimes know what they're doing?"

"They always know something," Leo said. "They can't always make things come out the way they want – " he shrugged, as one stating an undebatable fact – "obviously, what with free will. But they always know something."

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Six weeks later Phoebe was in her bedroom watching "Bewitched" on TV, perched on the end of her bed, painting her toenails. Samantha had just realized that something magical had had unexpected effects, and Elizabeth Montgomery did a take that amused both the laugh track and Phoebe. Samantha twitched her nose, and vanished.

The Stevenses' empty living room stayed on the screen.

After a moment, it was eerie. Phoebe leaned forward, breathing fast.

Cole walked into the Stevenses' living room and smiled at her. "Hello, Phoebe."

She could only stare.

"I know you hate it when I do this," he continued, "but after this I promise –

"Well. I've made you promises.

"The fact is – " it was as though the words were having a hard time coming out of his mouth – "I may never see you again, and I had to see you once to say goodbye.

"I think Clara's right about one thing. At least." He smiled wryly. "I think you're an addiction for me. It can't be good for you, being the object of someone's addiction. I'm finally realizing that the addiction's not good for me. You dropped your polish."

Phoebe barely glanced at the red blob that Slave to Passion was leaving on her rug.

"Clara's fine, by the way. In spite of her difficult patient. If she knew I were doing this, she'd say hi. She expects to be back and resume her practice in the next couple of months.

"I don't know what the future holds for me. Let's be pragmatic." This sounded as if it were an ongoing discussion he was having with himself. "I could conjure a rap sheet and shimmer myself into prison, but I think the environment there would be – well, let's face it, eventually I'd be a danger to everyone there. Even if I managed to keep my sanity, when I'd been there 70 or 80 years without dying, it would be a tip-off to the reality of the magical realm. You know what that results in. Still, I have to do something –

"Well, Clara says I jump too far ahead. That I have to focus on making right choices in each present moment.

"Free will does exist, Phoebe. You always knew it. A lot of us sinners forget it, or we block it out for our own convenience. We have to keep reminding ourselves of it every day, every minute.

"The thing is – even with making right choices and pragmatism and soul-healing activities – " he rolled his eyes a bit and grinned – "a lot of listening to silence – even with all that, I still can't shake the feeling that you and I will be together someday."

He held up his hand. "I'm not banking on it, don't worry. It's not my goal." He grinned again. "Only recently have I come to the realization that there are other goals possible in the universe. But it's a feeling that persists with me. Call it a premonition."

The woman in her room and the man in the borrowed setting locked gazes for a moment, as they had across the forest clearing. Cole took a breath, as if to say something else.

Then he was gone, and the show went on as before.

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_Author's Note: Thanks so much to the people who read and reviewed! It was TRULY appreciated! I think I've learned some things, which I hope to apply in my next story._


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